Good perspectives to smooth some of the rough edges of the past week.
I give no mercy to him for his evil actions, but I do think a large chunk of the population from his parents generation to his, have been pumped so full of garbage, from the government, the media, advertisers, entertainment conglomerates and the abhorrent public school system that a return to a more moral and civil society will take much more than a trial and pontifications by so called leaders.
The fight for a civil society will take time and serious efforts by all who wish to participate in it.
Exactly. Ultimately his actions are his own and nothing that he believed would excuse that. I'm just one of those people who doesn't believe what the media tells me about something, I want to read it for myself.
And what I read was the ramblings of somebody who DID believe what the media and everybody else trying to start a race war told him, instead of going out and finding out the truth for himself.
As for his actions being "his own". it really depends on what kind of programming he got - see the Jerry Mander piece I cited above. It would apply to videos as well.
You are so right. They are all pumped full of garbage. Whether its is replacement theory, white supremacy, etc. making people feel badly about their own race or other races is an abomination. I am an old lady. I was brought up to be color blind. My parents were, and I was. I will admit though, class mattered. And manners. And education. And knowing people no matter what the color, from around the world. And it is funny, I didnt become a globalist, despite the higher education I received. But I lived and worked outside this country. Gives you a perspective you cannot get nowadays, certainly not from exotic vacations.
Ha! It seems to this fellow oldster that young people (may I use the seemingly archaic term, "yuppie"?) purchase vacation "packages" that do nothing but replicate a weekend at home!
Another kid with autism desperate because mainstreaming ensured continuous, increasing social isolation. At one point before this happened, Gendron's mother called the mother of his only HS friend and begged her to ask her son to call Gendron and arrange a get-together because he was so lonely. Mom still trying to get playdates for her kid.
And all everyone talks about is how great it is for the normal kids to learn compassion and empathy for their "differently-abled" classmate. And then everyone gets to HS.
And how did he pay for the equipment? Everyone pretending it was a nice hobby?
That 'compassion and empathy' typically involves congratulating themselves for being so 'enlightened' without actually engaging with the person in any way at all. Just another way to score social points without being social.
The friend his mother tried to contact for that playdate is Hispanic, with a black girlfriend who spent time with Gendron. Yeah, I know, "...but he had [ ] friends!"
Most of the purported white supremacists I've heard of came from profoundly disturbed and neglect-filled, if not actually violent and riven by addictions, family backgrounds, and they were searching for a psuedo-intellectual framing, supported by tons and tons of online pseudo-friends, as outlets for their rage and despair.
Not excusing it. We pity a rabid fox because it didn't choose to be ill but we must put it down anyway.
Where else was his father in his upbringing? (Sorry, I haven't read about his history, yet, and thank you for reading his manifesto. I confess I don't really want to myself, but I hope this doesn't offend anyone, and I do want to understand with the aim of minimizing the damage caused by the few (out of 7 billion) inhuman humans.)
They appeared to be the perfect family: Two engineer parents and three nice sons.
I'll bet you anything that the parents resisted from the beginning any idea that Payton needed to be anywhere but in a regular classroom, and they were gonna make him "normal" no matter what the cost.
There are so many ways to destroy one's children and turn them into shrapnel grenades. I just don't believe for a minute this kid was a sociopath, as so many killers are. He was sick with desperation and longing to be admired and he found the internet cesspool that purported to show him the way.
Yes, you mentioned that before, and this time I'll remember, SCA!
I only started posting on substack a year and half ago, and only because of the higher level of debate. My default titling is only meant to sustain that, but I appreciate the informal as well.
In fact, call me anything but late for supper. I only let my wife do that!
It’s an incredibly complex issue that surely can’t be concisely captured in a single post. They’ve built a structure that will surely cause more tragedy like this to occur again in the future.
The vaxxed vs unvaxxed thing is just an indicator of susceptibility to media so far as I'm concerned. As for media - nowadays mostly non-print media - see this still very relevant piece: https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/4Args4ElimTV.html#X
Yeah, you get a lot of weird stuff, like people who say that viruses don't exist or that they don't provoke an inflammatory or immune response, or a lot of other stuff. I oppose the vaccines, because they aren't vaccines - they don't stop infection, and they don't stop spread - both of which vaccines must do. They're proven to be defective and they should be pulled from the market.
So call them something else. They should be available to the free individual.
It's not the mRNA "vaccines," it's the fucking MANDATES (and, of course, the egregious idea that ANY private-sector job is non-essential), the use of force by the State against the free individual to decide for themselves.
It depends, some technology is definitely the enemy - implantable chips for "vaccine passports" are one example, ubiquitous surveillance technology another, immersive VR technology potentially another. And as the article outlines, TV bypasses the critical faculties in the brain, pouring images in. In fact, the first broadcast TV was in Nazi Germany in 1935, used for spreading Nazi propaganda. So TV is by no means neutral or innocuous - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-AUOclEh4Y
Of course. And nuclear technology will be used to save the world (centuries from now, when 50 billion will ACTUALLY start to affect planetary evolution), or destroy the world in radiation released by megalomaniacal cornered Putins.
ALL technology can be used for evil or good. But genies can't be put back in bottles. We learn, individually and collectively, to deal with it, or not. And we evolve (mentally) with it, or we fail to do so.
There is no getting rid of it, today's cutting edges, nor tomorrow's.
At current world population growth of 1% per year (by Rule of 70, a doubling every 70 years, with current population of 8 billion, that's 16 billion in 2092, 32 billion in 2162, ca. 50 billion in 2200 or thereabout... but you forget that mechanized ag is a means of converting fossil fuels into food, and that's going to come to a screeching halt about 30 years from now - or before... There's something called Limits to Growth, you might have a look - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCfnKTzx9FA
Population growth is moderating. Many Western cultures are already below replacement.
I simply disagree that fossil fuels are suddenly going to run out in 30 years, but I confess I have no archived links to back up my position. I only offer here what i consider to be the obvious: We should have long since learned to trust the free market and it's wonderful supply-and-demand price signaling. We will have PLENTY of warning, and plenty of time to adapt, if we just trust the apprehension of reality that true Capitalism, and ONLY true (i.e. not State corrupted) Capitalism obviously offers humanity.
You must be an economist of some sort. Prices do not create non-renewable resources ex nihilo - and Thomas Gold was simply out to lunch. Eventually, the energetic cost of extracting one unit of fossil fuel energy equals, then exceeds, the energetic gain produced from that unit of energy, and neither capitalism nor prices or the "free market" can change this. See http://theoildrum.com/node/3786 - "One potentially useful alternative or supplement to conventional economic analysis is net energy analysis, which is the analysis of how much energy is required to make a unit of the energy in question. Net energy is sometimes called energy surplus, energy balance, or, as I prefer, energy return on investment (EROI) (Hall 1972, Hall and Cleveland 1981, Cleveland et al.1985, Hall, Cleveland and Kaufmann 1986). Its advocates, including me, believe that net energy analysis offers the possibility of a very useful approach for looking at the advantages and disadvantages of a given fuel and offers the possibility of looking into the future in a way that markets seem unable to do. Its advocates also believe that in time real market prices must approximately reflect comprehensive EROIs, at least if corrections for quality are made and subsidies removed. Thus can we make market decisions based on biophysical, rather than market, economic analysis? At a minimum I believe that biophysical analysis can add a great deal of insight to traditional market analysis."
A more interesting phenomena is the mental training resulting from video music. The rapid, game like, scene changes do affect brain function. Perhaps why we are finding people with horribly poor attention spans - TL:DR markings. The inability to concentrate has potential bad outcomes. Not sure I see that being addressed much but it may account for a generalized decline in test scores and may limit future innovation.
What was the effect of the redefinition of pandemic, case, lockdown, immunity, vaccine, and the rest? On what basis are these redefinitions justified by scientists and doctors and others who have used those redefinitions in place of the useful meaning of these significant terms? Talk with your doctor about the redefinition of case, for example, and you will be greeted with confusion about the PCR test. Likewise with the notion of asymptomatic spread, discuss this with your doctor and you will realize the confusions that have been promulgated have piled one upon another.
Then reflect on the real history of causes such as 'gay marriage', (gutting marriage of its core meaning), 'clump of cells' (human being), and 'undocumented immigrant' (illegal alien', and more recently the push to enforce the scheme of many genders beyond the two-sexed nature of humankind.
When significant words are gutted of their useful meaning, they become empty shells into which ideologues pour their replacement. The contradictions that pile-up lead to confusion. And that leads to many people, if not most, throwing their hands in the air in despair and resignation. The apathy that sets in leaves a wide swath of uncontested territory that the antagonists occupy in defiance of sound reason and common understanding of the fundamentals. When uncontested, that territory becomes occupied permanently. This aggression against such terms is then turned against any who question the redefinition which, as per the aggressors who attacked those very terms, claimed evolve or are subject to relativism.
If you have not noticed this pattern, but have come to feel aggrieved by the covidmaniacs who have used this well-trodden route to undermining society, or you have attempted to claim the high ground of competency in science or whatnot and yet have seen society steamrolled anyway, well, better late than never.
One of the most concerning things about this whole covid mess is the willingness of the ‘leaders’ to change definitions of words in order to make their statements ‘technically true’, when those statements would have been false just a few months ago.
The biggest one, of course, is ‘vaccine’. Just a few short months ago, a vaccine was designed to make you IMMUNE to the virus. That’s why you don’t need regular boosters for your ‘normal’ vaccines. Once the public realized these jabs don’t even count as vaccines, something had to be done. That something was changing the definition of vaccine.
Quite right, SC, it is a shell game with very high stakes. Thanks for your kind words.
So, they make up absurd redefinitions that are distant to the useful meaning of these highly significant terms. Not evolution of words but wholesale gutting and replacements.
THEN, after their promotion of change for the sake of ... who knows what ... they then say the definitions are locked and unchangable. A moment before, open to "evolve", and then a moment later, permanent.
The ambiguity is part of the game. It frustrates and confuses. And this fits well into the ever changing and arbitrariness of their rule-making. Yeh, it is all beyond the common person to grapple with. Best to just surrender the language with which we could actually articulate ideas and reasoning that kep our feet on the ground. Surrender the language and give up the ground.
And with that, poof, you find yourself beckoned to join them in quicksand and sink along with everybody else and everything else that really mattered anyway.
It would also be interesting to know if this guy was on a bunch of psychotropic meds. Most "mass shooters" over the last couple decades have been found to be on (or had been on) psychotropics. In a country where almost a quarter of the kids are on some kind of mind altering/brain changing drug for "anxiety" or "ADHD" or whatever new psychosis they come up with as an excuse to tranquilize our children, it's a wonder we don't see much more of this. Especially since the side effects of many of these "drugs" are psychosis, thoughts of murder, suicide, etc.
Ironic that you learned to appreciate individuality playing a TEAM sport (albeit one where basically one individual acts at a time, and everyone else watches them!).
I was on football and basketball teams as well, but you're still correct about the irony. Some people weren't interested at all in the team and were only concerned with their own stats. Those people will suck you in and ruin your performance, if you let them.
Yes, that's the team aspect: your individual effort/accomplishment *may* help or hinder the team, but is secondary in ALL aspects. You win/lose together, not separately.
But the real winning is the camaraderie and the *shared* (dare I say "collective") effort.
In my playing days (basketball & baseball), the real pride I felt was the few occasions I happened to carry the team (made even more precious by the rarity!).
Only individuals are the agents of freedom and progress. Groups, including the ultimate one, Society, are almost always nothing but obstacles, and sources of regression.
The young individual is forever at risk of capture by the latter. Such is the cost of a Society based on ensuring individual freedom.
I am a bit skeptical of his stated motivation. Yes, he could very well just be a racist nut job but something does not feel right to me. His rambling ran between copy paste and completely noncoherent. Gendron has a history of making threats and planning violence well before this. I would not be surprised if he did not even give a damn about race and just wanted to kill a bunch of people in the most controversial and attention getting way he could. At least I can take comfort in a simple mathematical equation.
Scrawny white kid + life without parole + general pop + black guys with nothing better to do but work out all day + enough infamy for everyone to know who he is and what he did + prison shower = glad I am not that guy!
SimulationCommander, I would invite you to challenge yourself to compare 1. the campaign to use government to gut the social institution of marriage of its core meaning with 2. the government campaign to promote covidmania through the manipulation of terms like pandemic, vaccine, immunity, herd immunity, and so forth. While we appear to be likeminded on covidmania, you might take different lessons from such a comparison than might others such as myself. That discussion could be enlightening as we compare recent history with current times. I think we all can fall into the trap of forgetting recent history while distracted by the current goings on.
Only one thing will minimize the inevitable crazies: not 1 ex-security guard packing and shooting back, but 10 law-abiding, responsible citizens with holstered and visible side-arms. The police can't be there in time.
Edit: Just heard about Texas shooting. Sorry to sound insensitive, and I would have delayed posting. But they always go where no one will shoot back.
to add to your point about the "counter example, we recently went through the ‘hate the unvaxxed’ phase, where we saw families torn apart and relationships destroyed" in a situation where close personal contact DOES NOT result in understanding and empathy. i can think of other times in history where this same thing happened- Rwandans and Bosnians slaughtering their neighbors, Germans turning in their Jewish colleagues, Soviet and Maoist children reporting on their parents.
suddenly the bonds of community and shared history are over turned by a mass hypnosis and formerly good people feel they are made superior by taking people's jobs, liberty and even life away from them in the name of ideology.
SimulationCommander, the primacy of group identity politics is what replaced the core meaning of the social institution of marriage when so-called 'gay marriage' was imposed. This imposition was not won on the basis of evidence but rather on the basis of an ideology that rejected the two-sexed nature of humankind and the core meaning of marriage which integrates the sexes and provides for responsible procreation. Much was already underway to attack that core meaning, which has nothing to do with stoning people nor with gay idenity politics, but it was indeed attacked with such false and poorly reasoned arguments.
I hesitated to point that out because today, after about a decade after the imposition of 'gay marriage', those falsehoods are now assumed correct and self-evident when today people talk of how enlightened the imposition was and how great it exemplifies their views on current events and issues.
Now, if you are open to dissecting your comparison with 'gay marriage' I am willing to make the effort with you to discuss how the comparison is faulty at its base. It is not a resolved issue, in actuality, except to the extent that people today assume far too much about the arguments made in favour of the imposition of 'gay marriage'.
Somehow it was deemed as hateful to defend the social institution of marriage against that imposition. The gutting of words, like marriage, of useful and significant meaning so as to frame false arguments has been repeated today under covidmania to an even greater extreme. When ideas are lost, due to the loss of such words, confusion is promoted.
Likewise, arguments about children and marriage were bombarded with emotional attacks that superseded the social scientific evidence. There are many comparisons to make with the campaign to impose 'gay marriage' on society but these do not favour your almost incidental use of marriage to illustrate the concern over division through group identity politics.
If you are closed to this type of discussion, I can understand. The social pressure used then was very like the social pressure today on current discussions about covidmania. I will leave it there if you are not open to such a discussion.
Personally I don't care what you do or what you want to call it. Government has no business being involved in the first place. I'm all for consenting adults to form any sort of bond they wish. If government is to be involved at all, it should be only to ensure the 'marriage contract' is upheld when the parties are in dispute (most likely divorce).
But (IMO) attitudes regarding fear/hatred of gays subsided long before gay marriage was a thing. And (once again IMO), the increasing failure of marriage isn't because gay people can now be miserable too, it's because people are unwilling to put the work in when immediate gratification is at their fingertips.
SimulationCommander the issue was not the name but the meaning.
The issue was not resolved the way you described, as you may be aware. The promotion of gay identity politics was front and centre and those who disagreed were villified as hateful and irrational and all the rest.
And, despite the self-contradictory arguments of the promoters of the abolition of the man-woman criterion, people were at liberty to form relationships, bonds, and partnerships with and without contracts. So nothing was actually added when the meaning of marriage was gutted of its useful and significant meaning.
More harm than good was done. But this is misremembered because of the emphasis on gay identity politics. That was a very poor basis upon which to smear people but it was done in the surrender to any means are justified to achieve the desired end.
Invoking the slippery slope was a grave self-contradiction that was common at the time. At least if measured by reason. Measured as a political strategy it won the day.
The cost came in the form of another major abuse of judicial review; and another major surrender of legislative authority vested in democratic and republican institutions. Again, on both of these points one could shrug and invoke the slippery slope. Many do that today in the midst of covidmania.
When informed consent is degraded to a choice to be forced to get a shot in the arm or to suffer penalties such as loss of livelihood and of basic liberties, the meaning, rather than the mere term, is at issue. Likewise when the words pandemic, vaccine, immunity, efficacy, safety, and so forth are gutted of useful and significant meaning.
Villification began on the pro-vax side with accusations against those who, for whatever reasons, would not comply. That has become the over-riding consideration rather than the merits and demerits of the shots. This was presaged with the other restrictions including masking and isolation and the nonsense about asymptomatic spread. The falsehoods piled up. The resolution in the offing is one that is emotional rather than reasonable and rational. Look at how the high courts have mishandled vax mandates.
If this goes on for a few more years, the basis for this mistreatment will be misremembered overall in society. How brave people were, when they put the so-called Greater Good over and above humane interactions with those villified as anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science-hacks. That is the future envisioned by those now promoting yet another form of group identity politics. And, again, fundamental social institutions of society are being upended to accomodate the New Think.
The "greater good" of covid vaccinations has been proven false. Worse than a social good, it has caused harm that will be increasingly revealed for all vax victims as we learn more of the effects. Recent book by Colleen Huber documents the evidence debunking "safe and effective." That evidence will lead to litigation and prosecution if we elect honest government. It begins November 8th.
The Greater Good nonsense is integral to covidmania and does not depend on proof nor on the sort of propositions that are constructed to be open to being proven false or true. My last paragraph above described a future in which we lose and covidmania wins by overcoming reason and evidence. The evidence is increasingly muddled and obfuscated. Meanwhile time passes and the agenda progresses.
I understand the C19 shots did not ever qualify as safe and effective. There was no true possible opportunity for informed consent even for those who rushed in without enticements and without coercions.
That is not the comparison point here. But as you brought it up, nothing that the advocates of gay 'marriage' predicted has come true, including the restoration of marriage as a stronger social institution via the inclusion of non-marital types of relationships. Gay 'marriage' has not become a new norm amongst that segment of the population either. And marital rates in broader society continue to fall. But many people just assumed then, and assume now, that marriage would benefit from the gutting of its core meaning. And as marriage would benefit so would individuals and the whole of society. Has not happened. That was a version of the Greater Good nonsense. It merely aped the reasoned argument that was based on the common good.
Then there are those who shrug and say that the core meaning was an illusion and does not matter anyway, not today, because society had become so advanced that it no longer needed such a social institution. Lots of arguments like that took a backseat to the main thrust which was about promoting the primacy of identity politics.
Another comparison point that has rapidly emerged with covidmania.
Placing hopes in the election of 'honest government' is very naive, in my view, because government is not the solution to what is going on in our society. Government, in all its possible forms, can only make things worse, now, because, as with marriage, the slippery slope was always a strategy rather than a fallacy.
Elections won't fix the problems, but ignoring elections makes things worse. The people we elect have the power to control us. Those who don't participate in government get controlled by those who do. Societies aren't improved by the act of voting nor degraded by the act of not voting. Societies perform as well as the people want it to. The recent disasters are entirely due to apathy.
There is apathy but there is also fear and anxiety. When we begin with the premise that government is the solution, we leave control in the hands of government. The goal of electing 'honest government' is naive given the history of government even in societies that have long tradition of electing their representatives.
If one has experience with government, history with it, and most of us do, then, it would be odd to even consider as achievable the initiation, much less the sustainability, of honest government. One must remain skeptical so as to restrain the governing apparatus. To do that one can vote, campaign, and such but the real power of the people, not mobs, but people, is the exercise of liberty despite government attempts to honestly fix what is going on in our society. Treat government as dishonest, always, and you might find the occassional exception worth celebrating as the ideal proposition. But count on it and you will be dissapointed and perhaps even harmed irreparably.
A lone individual can be right and a big majority be wrong, of course. But the liberty of that individual is the safeguard against government control of us all regardless of whether the individual is part of a group identity that is minority or majority or ambiguously apathetic.
Everything is open to discussion, except for those too insecure to defend their principles, or who just don't have any of their own, as is often the case. The gay marriage debate isn't really about gays or marriage, but of trying to force others to agree with principles few people accept. The US Constitution guarantees free association, and if two people want to partner, that's not the governments business, nor anyone else's. Likewise, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, and if anybody chooses to hate others and to say so, that's not the governments business, nor anyone else's. The Constitution, and the laws, and society customs do not permit anyone to attack others.
Likewise the Buffalo killer is allowed to hate others for their race or their politics or their height or any other reason. (Indeed, short people got no reason. The photo of his arraignment shows him considerably shorter than the accompanying marshal.) He thought it was okay to act on that hate because he has been immersed in a hate culture formulated by the failed education system and the sensationalist media. He was correct that we're losing our culture, but for the wrong reasons. America's problems aren't because of opposing races, but because of opposing politics. Those who want to save our culture need to focus on those who are inciting the divisions. We should start with old Joe, and his handlers, and his parrots in the propaganda media. Until we do, expect a lot more Buffalos.
Good point "immersed in a hate culture formulated by" - a lack of any morality education in the process of socializing. While it ought not to be the function of society at large, the educational establishment, parents have abandoned any pretense of religious behavior or acknowledgment of social responsibility. Not sure how we bring morality back.
Morality is variable. It used to be considered immoral for women to show their ankles in public. Some cultures it still is, most cultures it is okay. Religions were established listed to institutionalize morals, and to enforce them. That's less popular in most cultures now, so we rely on socialization to define boundaries of behavior. Everyone has to choose their own moral framework, and enforce it within their sphere of influence. There are no absolutes, but we tend to follow the common framework of those we live with. The Buffalo shooter had his own little group who agreed with, and supported, his morality. Living in a world with other people is never easy.
You presented the assertion that there are no absolutes. Seems to contradict itself.
You asserted something I do not think you can demonstrate with evidence, however, you might demonstrate through assumptions that turn on circular thinking.
Let's assume that those who'd agreed with and supported his morality, as you would characterize his ramblings, existed and influenced him -- socialized him.
Is not his conduct the true measure of his words? If so, then, the conduct of people who agree with and support covidmania are comparable on that basis. As is the conduct/socialization of those of us who disagree with and oppose covidmania.
Objectively, is it not a sign, if not hard evidence, of lack of socialization and lack of morality to commit mass killings of innocent people? I think if one were to rely on the self-contradictory assertion that there are no absolutes would have great difficulty in reconciling your remarks with opposition to covidmania and its ill-effects on public morality and on behaviors.
But even if it would be difficult, one might still struggle, heroically, to justify opposition to covidmania without resort to some foundational moral axioms.
Socialization creates its own pathologies. Groupthink makes most people subject to the morals of the strongest will. Moral axioms are established by the group, and if morals of individuals disagree, they will be ostracized or punished. The evidence is all around us. Better to deal with the world as it is rather than how we wish it was.
David, you know, I think you misremember what happened re the marraige debate. Either that or you are relying on what others have said about it.
Dealing with the world as it is David, was not the approach of the fanatics who pressed for the abolition of the man-woman criterion of marriage which stood for millenia. To wish that marriage was non-sexed, or that it did not provide for responsible procreation, is to fantasize that the nature of humankind is not two-sexed. And, guess what, we see that very fantasizing being pressed by yet another huge government over-reach in redefining unreal as real.
Those in favor of gutting the social institution of marriage were in the minority, through and through, and so they argued that the majority was evil, hateful, vile, and otherwise immoral. The various ways that their agenda was pushed forward relied on their use of government over-reach. Their arguments were nonosensical, self-contradictory, and dependent on redefinitions and purposeful confusions. This was not evolutionary but revolutionary actions by a minority -- in fact most of those who'd identify as gay were not that keen to join the government over-reach. And so group identity politics was utilized to make it next to impossible for a gay-identified individual to speak against the agenda.
That is group identity politics at its most repressive. Until, now, with the very strange concoction of a "PROBLEM" and a list of non-solutions re C19 and the scientism of covidmania. Group identiity politics is now far more excessive than ever before. And, once again, a minority is dictating to society that redefinitions are the new normal and that immoral behavior is moral behavior and that the governmetn must codifying all of the above to save society from itself.
We need to restore society by removing this gigantic and abusive over-reach.
The long fall of marriage has undermined parental influence on children and on society, one generation at a time. Deterioration of marriage, and thus of family, has had a profoundly negative and lasting impact on public morality. Here I do not refer to Group Think, one-size fits all, and the rest of the bunk that has come along with relativism and, now, Wokism. When we gutted marriage of its meaning, we cut out the very notions that buttress the parent-child relationship and the morality that each of us pursues the common good. I know that this has been a struggle for decades and decades but without strong foudnations a society becomes lost and vulnerable in great storms like the huge wave of disasters that are coming our way in the shadow of covidmania. This is not about a reaction to a virus or a so-called pandemic, really, but about societal endurance in crises. This covidmania is mostly pretense for further societal breakdown.
The best we might do now is disrupt the worse tendencies and possible postpone the inevitable so that some stronger segment of society, with some healthier and robust moral foundations, can withstand the storm and come out the other side intact and capable of rebuilding.
Whether impacts of shifting morals are negative or not is a matter of perspective. Every adjustment is satisfactory to some, unsatisfactory to others. Successful existence requires accommodating the consensus. Those who prefer different philosophies only need to present them, argue for them, exhibit them, and hope others agree. None of us gets to define morality for others. The Buffalo shooter tried to impose his. He is being punished.
David Watson, there was no consensus on 'gay marriage' but the news media, the entertainment media, and the elite political class certainly presumed there was such a consensus long before their goal of aboliton of the man-woman criterion was accomplished through means other than an actual consensus. This is repeated today by those who talk about the right side of history and other bunkum.
The gutting of marriage of its core meaning ws not an adjustment, in the sense of a minor change, but a wholesale attack on the social institution itself. There is no cause for that attack except to gain further control over civil society -- which is quite distinct from government. However, to assume the consensus was inevitable was to assume, at the getgo, that government created and owned civil society and all of the social institutions of civil society. That was baked-into the campaign to impose gay 'marriage' via a wide array of self-contradictory arguments and risible rhetoric.
Now, if there had been an honest statement that the goal really was to provide contractual supports for arrangements that are not husband-wife but still merited such supports, and other safeguards, then, that would have been sufficient, and actually was sufficient, to achieve recongition of the lived fact the liberty to form such relationships. Gay identity was thrown into the attack on marriage and millions of gay people were set alight with emotional arguments about racist-like animus and the rest. Respect for the social institution of marriage does not take the form of gutting it of its significant and useful meaning.
But the contrary was propagandized over and over. No actual sound argument was offered instead.
But who was punished, David, if not those who peacefully and yes lovingly defended, supported, and campaigned for core meaning of the social institution that was mercilessly attacked in the name of the emotivism of gay identity politics? Good and decent people who stood against the abuses of judicial review and who stood against government as the solution. The impositon of gay 'marriage' was about government intervention, takeover, and control of the basic unit of a free society.
Your perspective is that the marriage debate was not about marriage. Instead, you said it was about "trying to force others to agree with principles few people accept."
What were those principles?
My point here of discussing the comparison between the covidmania of our current time and the gay identity politics of recent history is to illustrate basic problems when confusion is promoted rather than clarity.
The marriage law did not prevent free association. It did not prevent formation of partnerships. The law recognized a social institution that the government neither created nor owned. However, the arguments made to abolish the man-woman criterion from the marriage law relied heavily, overhwhelmingly, on making the non-marital type of relationshp the business of government and everyone else.
Now, what is the line drawn between the marital relationshp and all other types of relationships, one might ask. Well, that goes to the core meaning of this social institution. But the argument against that core meaning began with the insistence that the government had no business recognizing that that type of relationship, as such, but was obliged to require all of society to treat non-marital types of arrangements as if these were marital.
The contradictions were legion. And this began with the many asssertions made without solid reasoning to back them up; a lot of assertions were also made in the name of social science that simply contradicted the mountains of evidence on marriage as a distinctive type of relationship.
This is the comparison that is worthy of reflecting on when comparing that marriage 'debate' with the current covidmania. The greatest amountn of outright hatred on display, at that time was from those who villified the people who stood peacefully in favour of the two-sexed basis of marriage. People lost their jobs. People were caught in improvised kangaroo courts. People were attacked for making financial contributions to a cause they believed in. Can you not see the comparisons with what has been going on these past couple of years?
And all of what is going on now has been prefaced by the heavy handed propaganda that moved government and other huge influential forces in our society to villify those with questions and concerns about Big Pharma, about Public Health excuses to trample basic liberties, and so forth. These are points of comparison.
The common factor in the sex dictates and the pandemic dictates and many others is the presumption by a large segment of society that they can require others to think and act as they do, or at least as they say to. Both cases are absolutely wrong, and contrary to US law. They get away with enforcing their will on those who don't agree only because we allow it.
David, the man-woman criterion of marriage law was not a sex dictate. And that criterion was not contrary to US law.
Also, the criterion did not presume to instruct gay people. There were gay people who married, under the criterion, and the mainstream voices of the pro-gay faction derided them as self-haters. That drummed people out of the public square. It was irrational. It was demeaning. And it did indeed provide an vehement example of some people dictating to others what to think and what to do.
Some of these married gay people had children. Yet they were encouraged to leave their marriages. Well, encouraged is probally putting it more politely than the proponents put it.
No, I think the comparison is with the primacy of group identity politics and with the readiness to gut useful words of their useful and significant meaning.
One can reasonably recognize the two-sexed sexual basis of marriage, and of marriage law, without resort to so-called sex dictates that would instruct people what they can and can not do sexually. Indeed, that was the status quo before the campaign was launched to attack the core meaning of the social institution of marriage.
This is comparable to the way that the ground was prepared with redefinitions, and with corruption of institutions, prior to covidmania. Not saying the two are exactly the same; not saying the two are of the same danger to society; but there are similarities that are very obvious if one takes a step back and relies on reason rather than emotion. People then, as now, came under the spell of emotional messaging.
And yes, that did occur on both sides of the marriage issue as it does today under convidmania. In that sense the marriage issue is a cautionary tale about how the government can over-reach and do more harm than good when it gets its claws into parts of civil society that are not created by nor owned by government.
Meanings of words, and language itself, evolves over time and region. We have to adapt or eventually we will only be talking to ourselves. Societies deteriorate faster when government gets in the business of redefining language.
Yes, that was the bogus argument of those who chose to gut marriage of its useful and significant meaning. If you bought that, then, please explain how the gutting of terms like pandemic, vaccine, immunity, herd immunity, lockdown, is irreconcilable with your assertion that this is due to evolution, as you put it.
The big hairy hand of Government, capital G, imposed the gutting of the meaning of marriage. This was not a tweaking by society over some sort of evolutionary period. This was a full on attack with the goal of changing the word via Government fiat.
Good perspectives to smooth some of the rough edges of the past week.
I give no mercy to him for his evil actions, but I do think a large chunk of the population from his parents generation to his, have been pumped so full of garbage, from the government, the media, advertisers, entertainment conglomerates and the abhorrent public school system that a return to a more moral and civil society will take much more than a trial and pontifications by so called leaders.
The fight for a civil society will take time and serious efforts by all who wish to participate in it.
Exactly. Ultimately his actions are his own and nothing that he believed would excuse that. I'm just one of those people who doesn't believe what the media tells me about something, I want to read it for myself.
And what I read was the ramblings of somebody who DID believe what the media and everybody else trying to start a race war told him, instead of going out and finding out the truth for himself.
As for his actions being "his own". it really depends on what kind of programming he got - see the Jerry Mander piece I cited above. It would apply to videos as well.
You are so right. They are all pumped full of garbage. Whether its is replacement theory, white supremacy, etc. making people feel badly about their own race or other races is an abomination. I am an old lady. I was brought up to be color blind. My parents were, and I was. I will admit though, class mattered. And manners. And education. And knowing people no matter what the color, from around the world. And it is funny, I didnt become a globalist, despite the higher education I received. But I lived and worked outside this country. Gives you a perspective you cannot get nowadays, certainly not from exotic vacations.
"...certainly not from exotic vacations."
Ha! It seems to this fellow oldster that young people (may I use the seemingly archaic term, "yuppie"?) purchase vacation "packages" that do nothing but replicate a weekend at home!
Another kid with autism desperate because mainstreaming ensured continuous, increasing social isolation. At one point before this happened, Gendron's mother called the mother of his only HS friend and begged her to ask her son to call Gendron and arrange a get-together because he was so lonely. Mom still trying to get playdates for her kid.
And all everyone talks about is how great it is for the normal kids to learn compassion and empathy for their "differently-abled" classmate. And then everyone gets to HS.
And how did he pay for the equipment? Everyone pretending it was a nice hobby?
That 'compassion and empathy' typically involves congratulating themselves for being so 'enlightened' without actually engaging with the person in any way at all. Just another way to score social points without being social.
Yup.
Correct, still incomplete. According to his social media feed, he was indeed a white supremacist. A left-wing white supremacist.
Surprise!
The friend his mother tried to contact for that playdate is Hispanic, with a black girlfriend who spent time with Gendron. Yeah, I know, "...but he had [ ] friends!"
Most of the purported white supremacists I've heard of came from profoundly disturbed and neglect-filled, if not actually violent and riven by addictions, family backgrounds, and they were searching for a psuedo-intellectual framing, supported by tons and tons of online pseudo-friends, as outlets for their rage and despair.
Not excusing it. We pity a rabid fox because it didn't choose to be ill but we must put it down anyway.
Insightful
I want his antidepressant / drug profile.
He may, indeed, not be responsible for the madness, and the resulting action.
Excellent post. Where was Gendron's father; have you that info, M. SCA?
"This is technically my dad’s gun because he bought it but he bought it for me so that I
could go hunting without borrowing my cousin’s guns. I got this for Christmas 2020 and it’s
decent for the cheapest gun you can buy from Dick’s Sporting Goods."
Thank you, M. Sim.
Where else was his father in his upbringing? (Sorry, I haven't read about his history, yet, and thank you for reading his manifesto. I confess I don't really want to myself, but I hope this doesn't offend anyone, and I do want to understand with the aim of minimizing the damage caused by the few (out of 7 billion) inhuman humans.)
They appeared to be the perfect family: Two engineer parents and three nice sons.
I'll bet you anything that the parents resisted from the beginning any idea that Payton needed to be anywhere but in a regular classroom, and they were gonna make him "normal" no matter what the cost.
There are so many ways to destroy one's children and turn them into shrapnel grenades. I just don't believe for a minute this kid was a sociopath, as so many killers are. He was sick with desperation and longing to be admired and he found the internet cesspool that purported to show him the way.
Thank you, M. SCA.
We're an informal crowd here. SCA is fine.
Yes, you mentioned that before, and this time I'll remember, SCA!
I only started posting on substack a year and half ago, and only because of the higher level of debate. My default titling is only meant to sustain that, but I appreciate the informal as well.
In fact, call me anything but late for supper. I only let my wife do that!
Then I presume you will not require any sort of purposeful caning but I reserve the right to withdraw that judgment.
Powerful post, commander!
Thank you! Sadly while I was reading there was a whole lot of stuff that I missed, but I should be able to group it all up into tomorrow's post.
It’s an incredibly complex issue that surely can’t be concisely captured in a single post. They’ve built a structure that will surely cause more tragedy like this to occur again in the future.
The vaxxed vs unvaxxed thing is just an indicator of susceptibility to media so far as I'm concerned. As for media - nowadays mostly non-print media - see this still very relevant piece: https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/4Args4ElimTV.html#X
Except plenty of the unvaxxed, as I glean from many comments over many Substacks, are motivated by various cultish perspectives of their own.
Yeah, you get a lot of weird stuff, like people who say that viruses don't exist or that they don't provoke an inflammatory or immune response, or a lot of other stuff. I oppose the vaccines, because they aren't vaccines - they don't stop infection, and they don't stop spread - both of which vaccines must do. They're proven to be defective and they should be pulled from the market.
So call them something else. They should be available to the free individual.
It's not the mRNA "vaccines," it's the fucking MANDATES (and, of course, the egregious idea that ANY private-sector job is non-essential), the use of force by the State against the free individual to decide for themselves.
They keep elderly off of ventilators and out of hospitals, too.
One person's "dangerous" cult is another's perfect life.
Libertarianism is a cult to the Statist.
I cannot disagree more. Technology is NOT the enemy, and NO good comes from forcefully separating the free individual from it.
It depends, some technology is definitely the enemy - implantable chips for "vaccine passports" are one example, ubiquitous surveillance technology another, immersive VR technology potentially another. And as the article outlines, TV bypasses the critical faculties in the brain, pouring images in. In fact, the first broadcast TV was in Nazi Germany in 1935, used for spreading Nazi propaganda. So TV is by no means neutral or innocuous - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-AUOclEh4Y
Of course. And nuclear technology will be used to save the world (centuries from now, when 50 billion will ACTUALLY start to affect planetary evolution), or destroy the world in radiation released by megalomaniacal cornered Putins.
ALL technology can be used for evil or good. But genies can't be put back in bottles. We learn, individually and collectively, to deal with it, or not. And we evolve (mentally) with it, or we fail to do so.
There is no getting rid of it, today's cutting edges, nor tomorrow's.
At current world population growth of 1% per year (by Rule of 70, a doubling every 70 years, with current population of 8 billion, that's 16 billion in 2092, 32 billion in 2162, ca. 50 billion in 2200 or thereabout... but you forget that mechanized ag is a means of converting fossil fuels into food, and that's going to come to a screeching halt about 30 years from now - or before... There's something called Limits to Growth, you might have a look - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCfnKTzx9FA
Population growth is moderating. Many Western cultures are already below replacement.
I simply disagree that fossil fuels are suddenly going to run out in 30 years, but I confess I have no archived links to back up my position. I only offer here what i consider to be the obvious: We should have long since learned to trust the free market and it's wonderful supply-and-demand price signaling. We will have PLENTY of warning, and plenty of time to adapt, if we just trust the apprehension of reality that true Capitalism, and ONLY true (i.e. not State corrupted) Capitalism obviously offers humanity.
You must be an economist of some sort. Prices do not create non-renewable resources ex nihilo - and Thomas Gold was simply out to lunch. Eventually, the energetic cost of extracting one unit of fossil fuel energy equals, then exceeds, the energetic gain produced from that unit of energy, and neither capitalism nor prices or the "free market" can change this. See http://theoildrum.com/node/3786 - "One potentially useful alternative or supplement to conventional economic analysis is net energy analysis, which is the analysis of how much energy is required to make a unit of the energy in question. Net energy is sometimes called energy surplus, energy balance, or, as I prefer, energy return on investment (EROI) (Hall 1972, Hall and Cleveland 1981, Cleveland et al.1985, Hall, Cleveland and Kaufmann 1986). Its advocates, including me, believe that net energy analysis offers the possibility of a very useful approach for looking at the advantages and disadvantages of a given fuel and offers the possibility of looking into the future in a way that markets seem unable to do. Its advocates also believe that in time real market prices must approximately reflect comprehensive EROIs, at least if corrections for quality are made and subsidies removed. Thus can we make market decisions based on biophysical, rather than market, economic analysis? At a minimum I believe that biophysical analysis can add a great deal of insight to traditional market analysis."
A more interesting phenomena is the mental training resulting from video music. The rapid, game like, scene changes do affect brain function. Perhaps why we are finding people with horribly poor attention spans - TL:DR markings. The inability to concentrate has potential bad outcomes. Not sure I see that being addressed much but it may account for a generalized decline in test scores and may limit future innovation.
I think you are rightfully warning about SOCIAL issues, not technological, per se.
What was the effect of the redefinition of pandemic, case, lockdown, immunity, vaccine, and the rest? On what basis are these redefinitions justified by scientists and doctors and others who have used those redefinitions in place of the useful meaning of these significant terms? Talk with your doctor about the redefinition of case, for example, and you will be greeted with confusion about the PCR test. Likewise with the notion of asymptomatic spread, discuss this with your doctor and you will realize the confusions that have been promulgated have piled one upon another.
Then reflect on the real history of causes such as 'gay marriage', (gutting marriage of its core meaning), 'clump of cells' (human being), and 'undocumented immigrant' (illegal alien', and more recently the push to enforce the scheme of many genders beyond the two-sexed nature of humankind.
When significant words are gutted of their useful meaning, they become empty shells into which ideologues pour their replacement. The contradictions that pile-up lead to confusion. And that leads to many people, if not most, throwing their hands in the air in despair and resignation. The apathy that sets in leaves a wide swath of uncontested territory that the antagonists occupy in defiance of sound reason and common understanding of the fundamentals. When uncontested, that territory becomes occupied permanently. This aggression against such terms is then turned against any who question the redefinition which, as per the aggressors who attacked those very terms, claimed evolve or are subject to relativism.
If you have not noticed this pattern, but have come to feel aggrieved by the covidmaniacs who have used this well-trodden route to undermining society, or you have attempted to claim the high ground of competency in science or whatnot and yet have seen society steamrolled anyway, well, better late than never.
This is a great comment I somehow missed. I wrote about the topic a while back:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/newspeak-is-upon-us
One of the most concerning things about this whole covid mess is the willingness of the ‘leaders’ to change definitions of words in order to make their statements ‘technically true’, when those statements would have been false just a few months ago.
The biggest one, of course, is ‘vaccine’. Just a few short months ago, a vaccine was designed to make you IMMUNE to the virus. That’s why you don’t need regular boosters for your ‘normal’ vaccines. Once the public realized these jabs don’t even count as vaccines, something had to be done. That something was changing the definition of vaccine.
Quite right, SC, it is a shell game with very high stakes. Thanks for your kind words.
So, they make up absurd redefinitions that are distant to the useful meaning of these highly significant terms. Not evolution of words but wholesale gutting and replacements.
THEN, after their promotion of change for the sake of ... who knows what ... they then say the definitions are locked and unchangable. A moment before, open to "evolve", and then a moment later, permanent.
The ambiguity is part of the game. It frustrates and confuses. And this fits well into the ever changing and arbitrariness of their rule-making. Yeh, it is all beyond the common person to grapple with. Best to just surrender the language with which we could actually articulate ideas and reasoning that kep our feet on the ground. Surrender the language and give up the ground.
And with that, poof, you find yourself beckoned to join them in quicksand and sink along with everybody else and everything else that really mattered anyway.
It would also be interesting to know if this guy was on a bunch of psychotropic meds. Most "mass shooters" over the last couple decades have been found to be on (or had been on) psychotropics. In a country where almost a quarter of the kids are on some kind of mind altering/brain changing drug for "anxiety" or "ADHD" or whatever new psychosis they come up with as an excuse to tranquilize our children, it's a wonder we don't see much more of this. Especially since the side effects of many of these "drugs" are psychosis, thoughts of murder, suicide, etc.
Ironic that you learned to appreciate individuality playing a TEAM sport (albeit one where basically one individual acts at a time, and everyone else watches them!).
I was on football and basketball teams as well, but you're still correct about the irony. Some people weren't interested at all in the team and were only concerned with their own stats. Those people will suck you in and ruin your performance, if you let them.
Yes, that's the team aspect: your individual effort/accomplishment *may* help or hinder the team, but is secondary in ALL aspects. You win/lose together, not separately.
But the real winning is the camaraderie and the *shared* (dare I say "collective") effort.
In my playing days (basketball & baseball), the real pride I felt was the few occasions I happened to carry the team (made even more precious by the rarity!).
Excellent.
Only individuals are the agents of freedom and progress. Groups, including the ultimate one, Society, are almost always nothing but obstacles, and sources of regression.
The young individual is forever at risk of capture by the latter. Such is the cost of a Society based on ensuring individual freedom.
Utopia does not exist.
I am a bit skeptical of his stated motivation. Yes, he could very well just be a racist nut job but something does not feel right to me. His rambling ran between copy paste and completely noncoherent. Gendron has a history of making threats and planning violence well before this. I would not be surprised if he did not even give a damn about race and just wanted to kill a bunch of people in the most controversial and attention getting way he could. At least I can take comfort in a simple mathematical equation.
Scrawny white kid + life without parole + general pop + black guys with nothing better to do but work out all day + enough infamy for everyone to know who he is and what he did + prison shower = glad I am not that guy!
SimulationCommander, I would invite you to challenge yourself to compare 1. the campaign to use government to gut the social institution of marriage of its core meaning with 2. the government campaign to promote covidmania through the manipulation of terms like pandemic, vaccine, immunity, herd immunity, and so forth. While we appear to be likeminded on covidmania, you might take different lessons from such a comparison than might others such as myself. That discussion could be enlightening as we compare recent history with current times. I think we all can fall into the trap of forgetting recent history while distracted by the current goings on.
Only one thing will minimize the inevitable crazies: not 1 ex-security guard packing and shooting back, but 10 law-abiding, responsible citizens with holstered and visible side-arms. The police can't be there in time.
Edit: Just heard about Texas shooting. Sorry to sound insensitive, and I would have delayed posting. But they always go where no one will shoot back.
ESG is anti-Capitalism. It will desroy wealth and kill humans.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/23/how-the-big-banks-fell-to-climate-panic/
Drain your 401k, and start actively managing your own Capital. This will save humanity.
to add to your point about the "counter example, we recently went through the ‘hate the unvaxxed’ phase, where we saw families torn apart and relationships destroyed" in a situation where close personal contact DOES NOT result in understanding and empathy. i can think of other times in history where this same thing happened- Rwandans and Bosnians slaughtering their neighbors, Germans turning in their Jewish colleagues, Soviet and Maoist children reporting on their parents.
suddenly the bonds of community and shared history are over turned by a mass hypnosis and formerly good people feel they are made superior by taking people's jobs, liberty and even life away from them in the name of ideology.
SimulationCommander, the primacy of group identity politics is what replaced the core meaning of the social institution of marriage when so-called 'gay marriage' was imposed. This imposition was not won on the basis of evidence but rather on the basis of an ideology that rejected the two-sexed nature of humankind and the core meaning of marriage which integrates the sexes and provides for responsible procreation. Much was already underway to attack that core meaning, which has nothing to do with stoning people nor with gay idenity politics, but it was indeed attacked with such false and poorly reasoned arguments.
I hesitated to point that out because today, after about a decade after the imposition of 'gay marriage', those falsehoods are now assumed correct and self-evident when today people talk of how enlightened the imposition was and how great it exemplifies their views on current events and issues.
Now, if you are open to dissecting your comparison with 'gay marriage' I am willing to make the effort with you to discuss how the comparison is faulty at its base. It is not a resolved issue, in actuality, except to the extent that people today assume far too much about the arguments made in favour of the imposition of 'gay marriage'.
Somehow it was deemed as hateful to defend the social institution of marriage against that imposition. The gutting of words, like marriage, of useful and significant meaning so as to frame false arguments has been repeated today under covidmania to an even greater extreme. When ideas are lost, due to the loss of such words, confusion is promoted.
Likewise, arguments about children and marriage were bombarded with emotional attacks that superseded the social scientific evidence. There are many comparisons to make with the campaign to impose 'gay marriage' on society but these do not favour your almost incidental use of marriage to illustrate the concern over division through group identity politics.
If you are closed to this type of discussion, I can understand. The social pressure used then was very like the social pressure today on current discussions about covidmania. I will leave it there if you are not open to such a discussion.
Peace.
Personally I don't care what you do or what you want to call it. Government has no business being involved in the first place. I'm all for consenting adults to form any sort of bond they wish. If government is to be involved at all, it should be only to ensure the 'marriage contract' is upheld when the parties are in dispute (most likely divorce).
But (IMO) attitudes regarding fear/hatred of gays subsided long before gay marriage was a thing. And (once again IMO), the increasing failure of marriage isn't because gay people can now be miserable too, it's because people are unwilling to put the work in when immediate gratification is at their fingertips.
SimulationCommander the issue was not the name but the meaning.
The issue was not resolved the way you described, as you may be aware. The promotion of gay identity politics was front and centre and those who disagreed were villified as hateful and irrational and all the rest.
And, despite the self-contradictory arguments of the promoters of the abolition of the man-woman criterion, people were at liberty to form relationships, bonds, and partnerships with and without contracts. So nothing was actually added when the meaning of marriage was gutted of its useful and significant meaning.
More harm than good was done. But this is misremembered because of the emphasis on gay identity politics. That was a very poor basis upon which to smear people but it was done in the surrender to any means are justified to achieve the desired end.
Invoking the slippery slope was a grave self-contradiction that was common at the time. At least if measured by reason. Measured as a political strategy it won the day.
The cost came in the form of another major abuse of judicial review; and another major surrender of legislative authority vested in democratic and republican institutions. Again, on both of these points one could shrug and invoke the slippery slope. Many do that today in the midst of covidmania.
When informed consent is degraded to a choice to be forced to get a shot in the arm or to suffer penalties such as loss of livelihood and of basic liberties, the meaning, rather than the mere term, is at issue. Likewise when the words pandemic, vaccine, immunity, efficacy, safety, and so forth are gutted of useful and significant meaning.
Villification began on the pro-vax side with accusations against those who, for whatever reasons, would not comply. That has become the over-riding consideration rather than the merits and demerits of the shots. This was presaged with the other restrictions including masking and isolation and the nonsense about asymptomatic spread. The falsehoods piled up. The resolution in the offing is one that is emotional rather than reasonable and rational. Look at how the high courts have mishandled vax mandates.
If this goes on for a few more years, the basis for this mistreatment will be misremembered overall in society. How brave people were, when they put the so-called Greater Good over and above humane interactions with those villified as anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science-hacks. That is the future envisioned by those now promoting yet another form of group identity politics. And, again, fundamental social institutions of society are being upended to accomodate the New Think.
The "greater good" of covid vaccinations has been proven false. Worse than a social good, it has caused harm that will be increasingly revealed for all vax victims as we learn more of the effects. Recent book by Colleen Huber documents the evidence debunking "safe and effective." That evidence will lead to litigation and prosecution if we elect honest government. It begins November 8th.
The Greater Good nonsense is integral to covidmania and does not depend on proof nor on the sort of propositions that are constructed to be open to being proven false or true. My last paragraph above described a future in which we lose and covidmania wins by overcoming reason and evidence. The evidence is increasingly muddled and obfuscated. Meanwhile time passes and the agenda progresses.
I understand the C19 shots did not ever qualify as safe and effective. There was no true possible opportunity for informed consent even for those who rushed in without enticements and without coercions.
That is not the comparison point here. But as you brought it up, nothing that the advocates of gay 'marriage' predicted has come true, including the restoration of marriage as a stronger social institution via the inclusion of non-marital types of relationships. Gay 'marriage' has not become a new norm amongst that segment of the population either. And marital rates in broader society continue to fall. But many people just assumed then, and assume now, that marriage would benefit from the gutting of its core meaning. And as marriage would benefit so would individuals and the whole of society. Has not happened. That was a version of the Greater Good nonsense. It merely aped the reasoned argument that was based on the common good.
Then there are those who shrug and say that the core meaning was an illusion and does not matter anyway, not today, because society had become so advanced that it no longer needed such a social institution. Lots of arguments like that took a backseat to the main thrust which was about promoting the primacy of identity politics.
Another comparison point that has rapidly emerged with covidmania.
Placing hopes in the election of 'honest government' is very naive, in my view, because government is not the solution to what is going on in our society. Government, in all its possible forms, can only make things worse, now, because, as with marriage, the slippery slope was always a strategy rather than a fallacy.
Elections won't fix the problems, but ignoring elections makes things worse. The people we elect have the power to control us. Those who don't participate in government get controlled by those who do. Societies aren't improved by the act of voting nor degraded by the act of not voting. Societies perform as well as the people want it to. The recent disasters are entirely due to apathy.
There is apathy but there is also fear and anxiety. When we begin with the premise that government is the solution, we leave control in the hands of government. The goal of electing 'honest government' is naive given the history of government even in societies that have long tradition of electing their representatives.
If one has experience with government, history with it, and most of us do, then, it would be odd to even consider as achievable the initiation, much less the sustainability, of honest government. One must remain skeptical so as to restrain the governing apparatus. To do that one can vote, campaign, and such but the real power of the people, not mobs, but people, is the exercise of liberty despite government attempts to honestly fix what is going on in our society. Treat government as dishonest, always, and you might find the occassional exception worth celebrating as the ideal proposition. But count on it and you will be dissapointed and perhaps even harmed irreparably.
A lone individual can be right and a big majority be wrong, of course. But the liberty of that individual is the safeguard against government control of us all regardless of whether the individual is part of a group identity that is minority or majority or ambiguously apathetic.
Everything is open to discussion, except for those too insecure to defend their principles, or who just don't have any of their own, as is often the case. The gay marriage debate isn't really about gays or marriage, but of trying to force others to agree with principles few people accept. The US Constitution guarantees free association, and if two people want to partner, that's not the governments business, nor anyone else's. Likewise, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, and if anybody chooses to hate others and to say so, that's not the governments business, nor anyone else's. The Constitution, and the laws, and society customs do not permit anyone to attack others.
Likewise the Buffalo killer is allowed to hate others for their race or their politics or their height or any other reason. (Indeed, short people got no reason. The photo of his arraignment shows him considerably shorter than the accompanying marshal.) He thought it was okay to act on that hate because he has been immersed in a hate culture formulated by the failed education system and the sensationalist media. He was correct that we're losing our culture, but for the wrong reasons. America's problems aren't because of opposing races, but because of opposing politics. Those who want to save our culture need to focus on those who are inciting the divisions. We should start with old Joe, and his handlers, and his parrots in the propaganda media. Until we do, expect a lot more Buffalos.
Good point "immersed in a hate culture formulated by" - a lack of any morality education in the process of socializing. While it ought not to be the function of society at large, the educational establishment, parents have abandoned any pretense of religious behavior or acknowledgment of social responsibility. Not sure how we bring morality back.
Morality is variable. It used to be considered immoral for women to show their ankles in public. Some cultures it still is, most cultures it is okay. Religions were established listed to institutionalize morals, and to enforce them. That's less popular in most cultures now, so we rely on socialization to define boundaries of behavior. Everyone has to choose their own moral framework, and enforce it within their sphere of influence. There are no absolutes, but we tend to follow the common framework of those we live with. The Buffalo shooter had his own little group who agreed with, and supported, his morality. Living in a world with other people is never easy.
You presented the assertion that there are no absolutes. Seems to contradict itself.
You asserted something I do not think you can demonstrate with evidence, however, you might demonstrate through assumptions that turn on circular thinking.
Let's assume that those who'd agreed with and supported his morality, as you would characterize his ramblings, existed and influenced him -- socialized him.
Is not his conduct the true measure of his words? If so, then, the conduct of people who agree with and support covidmania are comparable on that basis. As is the conduct/socialization of those of us who disagree with and oppose covidmania.
Objectively, is it not a sign, if not hard evidence, of lack of socialization and lack of morality to commit mass killings of innocent people? I think if one were to rely on the self-contradictory assertion that there are no absolutes would have great difficulty in reconciling your remarks with opposition to covidmania and its ill-effects on public morality and on behaviors.
But even if it would be difficult, one might still struggle, heroically, to justify opposition to covidmania without resort to some foundational moral axioms.
Socialization creates its own pathologies. Groupthink makes most people subject to the morals of the strongest will. Moral axioms are established by the group, and if morals of individuals disagree, they will be ostracized or punished. The evidence is all around us. Better to deal with the world as it is rather than how we wish it was.
David, you know, I think you misremember what happened re the marraige debate. Either that or you are relying on what others have said about it.
Dealing with the world as it is David, was not the approach of the fanatics who pressed for the abolition of the man-woman criterion of marriage which stood for millenia. To wish that marriage was non-sexed, or that it did not provide for responsible procreation, is to fantasize that the nature of humankind is not two-sexed. And, guess what, we see that very fantasizing being pressed by yet another huge government over-reach in redefining unreal as real.
Those in favor of gutting the social institution of marriage were in the minority, through and through, and so they argued that the majority was evil, hateful, vile, and otherwise immoral. The various ways that their agenda was pushed forward relied on their use of government over-reach. Their arguments were nonosensical, self-contradictory, and dependent on redefinitions and purposeful confusions. This was not evolutionary but revolutionary actions by a minority -- in fact most of those who'd identify as gay were not that keen to join the government over-reach. And so group identity politics was utilized to make it next to impossible for a gay-identified individual to speak against the agenda.
That is group identity politics at its most repressive. Until, now, with the very strange concoction of a "PROBLEM" and a list of non-solutions re C19 and the scientism of covidmania. Group identiity politics is now far more excessive than ever before. And, once again, a minority is dictating to society that redefinitions are the new normal and that immoral behavior is moral behavior and that the governmetn must codifying all of the above to save society from itself.
We need to restore society by removing this gigantic and abusive over-reach.
The long fall of marriage has undermined parental influence on children and on society, one generation at a time. Deterioration of marriage, and thus of family, has had a profoundly negative and lasting impact on public morality. Here I do not refer to Group Think, one-size fits all, and the rest of the bunk that has come along with relativism and, now, Wokism. When we gutted marriage of its meaning, we cut out the very notions that buttress the parent-child relationship and the morality that each of us pursues the common good. I know that this has been a struggle for decades and decades but without strong foudnations a society becomes lost and vulnerable in great storms like the huge wave of disasters that are coming our way in the shadow of covidmania. This is not about a reaction to a virus or a so-called pandemic, really, but about societal endurance in crises. This covidmania is mostly pretense for further societal breakdown.
The best we might do now is disrupt the worse tendencies and possible postpone the inevitable so that some stronger segment of society, with some healthier and robust moral foundations, can withstand the storm and come out the other side intact and capable of rebuilding.
Whether impacts of shifting morals are negative or not is a matter of perspective. Every adjustment is satisfactory to some, unsatisfactory to others. Successful existence requires accommodating the consensus. Those who prefer different philosophies only need to present them, argue for them, exhibit them, and hope others agree. None of us gets to define morality for others. The Buffalo shooter tried to impose his. He is being punished.
David Watson, there was no consensus on 'gay marriage' but the news media, the entertainment media, and the elite political class certainly presumed there was such a consensus long before their goal of aboliton of the man-woman criterion was accomplished through means other than an actual consensus. This is repeated today by those who talk about the right side of history and other bunkum.
The gutting of marriage of its core meaning ws not an adjustment, in the sense of a minor change, but a wholesale attack on the social institution itself. There is no cause for that attack except to gain further control over civil society -- which is quite distinct from government. However, to assume the consensus was inevitable was to assume, at the getgo, that government created and owned civil society and all of the social institutions of civil society. That was baked-into the campaign to impose gay 'marriage' via a wide array of self-contradictory arguments and risible rhetoric.
Now, if there had been an honest statement that the goal really was to provide contractual supports for arrangements that are not husband-wife but still merited such supports, and other safeguards, then, that would have been sufficient, and actually was sufficient, to achieve recongition of the lived fact the liberty to form such relationships. Gay identity was thrown into the attack on marriage and millions of gay people were set alight with emotional arguments about racist-like animus and the rest. Respect for the social institution of marriage does not take the form of gutting it of its significant and useful meaning.
But the contrary was propagandized over and over. No actual sound argument was offered instead.
But who was punished, David, if not those who peacefully and yes lovingly defended, supported, and campaigned for core meaning of the social institution that was mercilessly attacked in the name of the emotivism of gay identity politics? Good and decent people who stood against the abuses of judicial review and who stood against government as the solution. The impositon of gay 'marriage' was about government intervention, takeover, and control of the basic unit of a free society.
The comparisons with covidmania are profound.
There is a consensus on gay marriage -- most people don't care. When the consensus is apathy, bad outcomes are guaranteed.
Hullo David.
Your perspective is that the marriage debate was not about marriage. Instead, you said it was about "trying to force others to agree with principles few people accept."
What were those principles?
My point here of discussing the comparison between the covidmania of our current time and the gay identity politics of recent history is to illustrate basic problems when confusion is promoted rather than clarity.
The marriage law did not prevent free association. It did not prevent formation of partnerships. The law recognized a social institution that the government neither created nor owned. However, the arguments made to abolish the man-woman criterion from the marriage law relied heavily, overhwhelmingly, on making the non-marital type of relationshp the business of government and everyone else.
Now, what is the line drawn between the marital relationshp and all other types of relationships, one might ask. Well, that goes to the core meaning of this social institution. But the argument against that core meaning began with the insistence that the government had no business recognizing that that type of relationship, as such, but was obliged to require all of society to treat non-marital types of arrangements as if these were marital.
The contradictions were legion. And this began with the many asssertions made without solid reasoning to back them up; a lot of assertions were also made in the name of social science that simply contradicted the mountains of evidence on marriage as a distinctive type of relationship.
This is the comparison that is worthy of reflecting on when comparing that marriage 'debate' with the current covidmania. The greatest amountn of outright hatred on display, at that time was from those who villified the people who stood peacefully in favour of the two-sexed basis of marriage. People lost their jobs. People were caught in improvised kangaroo courts. People were attacked for making financial contributions to a cause they believed in. Can you not see the comparisons with what has been going on these past couple of years?
And all of what is going on now has been prefaced by the heavy handed propaganda that moved government and other huge influential forces in our society to villify those with questions and concerns about Big Pharma, about Public Health excuses to trample basic liberties, and so forth. These are points of comparison.
The common factor in the sex dictates and the pandemic dictates and many others is the presumption by a large segment of society that they can require others to think and act as they do, or at least as they say to. Both cases are absolutely wrong, and contrary to US law. They get away with enforcing their will on those who don't agree only because we allow it.
David, the man-woman criterion of marriage law was not a sex dictate. And that criterion was not contrary to US law.
Also, the criterion did not presume to instruct gay people. There were gay people who married, under the criterion, and the mainstream voices of the pro-gay faction derided them as self-haters. That drummed people out of the public square. It was irrational. It was demeaning. And it did indeed provide an vehement example of some people dictating to others what to think and what to do.
Some of these married gay people had children. Yet they were encouraged to leave their marriages. Well, encouraged is probally putting it more politely than the proponents put it.
No, I think the comparison is with the primacy of group identity politics and with the readiness to gut useful words of their useful and significant meaning.
One can reasonably recognize the two-sexed sexual basis of marriage, and of marriage law, without resort to so-called sex dictates that would instruct people what they can and can not do sexually. Indeed, that was the status quo before the campaign was launched to attack the core meaning of the social institution of marriage.
This is comparable to the way that the ground was prepared with redefinitions, and with corruption of institutions, prior to covidmania. Not saying the two are exactly the same; not saying the two are of the same danger to society; but there are similarities that are very obvious if one takes a step back and relies on reason rather than emotion. People then, as now, came under the spell of emotional messaging.
And yes, that did occur on both sides of the marriage issue as it does today under convidmania. In that sense the marriage issue is a cautionary tale about how the government can over-reach and do more harm than good when it gets its claws into parts of civil society that are not created by nor owned by government.
Meanings of words, and language itself, evolves over time and region. We have to adapt or eventually we will only be talking to ourselves. Societies deteriorate faster when government gets in the business of redefining language.
Yes, that was the bogus argument of those who chose to gut marriage of its useful and significant meaning. If you bought that, then, please explain how the gutting of terms like pandemic, vaccine, immunity, herd immunity, lockdown, is irreconcilable with your assertion that this is due to evolution, as you put it.
The big hairy hand of Government, capital G, imposed the gutting of the meaning of marriage. This was not a tweaking by society over some sort of evolutionary period. This was a full on attack with the goal of changing the word via Government fiat.
Covidmania comparisons are very apt.